


Clouds and Honey

by Yve



Category: Rune Factory (Video Games), Rune Factory 4
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Fluff, One Shot, by request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 08:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2381684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yve/pseuds/Yve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doug and Amber go an an afternoon picnic in Yokmir forest together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clouds and Honey

**Author's Note:**

> A prize awarded to one of my readers for capturing the 1000 hit kiriban for Dwarf & Nymph. The winner requested Doug/Amber so here's some dorky, adorable fluff for you!

“Ooh! Is that for me?” Amber cried shrilly, her antenna standing upright in eager attention as she leaned toward the red-headed young man sitting across from her on the checkered picnic blanket below them. Doug’s pointed ears pricked up

“Th-this?” He held up the jar of honey he had brought to sweeten the iced tea. Her enormous pale gray eyes shone brightly as she nodded in giddy excitement.

How on earth could he say no to that?

“Uh, Yeah. Of course it is! Everything I brought is to share with you. He gestured to the half-unpacked basket of foods.

“Oh, _thank you_!” She squealed, lifting the jar from his hands with her tiny, slender fingers outstretched. Her delicate butterfly wings fluttered excitedly on her back, lifting some of her weight off the ground as she clutched the jar of honey. “Heeheeheeee!” Her unbridled delight was expressed in every sound and every move she made. Doug’s heart fluttered in his chest in time with her wings.

Had there ever been a creature as adorable as this? He sincerely doubted it.

Amber wrapped one of her tiny arms around the jar and tugged at the lid with the other, making little frustrated squeaks when it refused to budge. He laughed lightly.

“Here, let me.” He reached out a hand and as her wings slowed and she settled back down onto the blanket. She deposited the jar into his hands and her antenna drooped. Doug’s mouth turned up in a smile without waiting for his mind. He could no more keep from smiling than he could lift off and fly with the delicate little guardian before him. He twisted off the lid to the jar easily and handed it back into her eager hands. A wide openmouthed smile full of glee spread across her face and she tipped the jar up to her lips and drank off several mouthfuls of the viscous golden sugary liquid.

Doug stared wide-eyed and dumbstruck. He thought she might dip a finger in the honey or maybe even eat a few spoonfuls of the stuff but _drinking_ it? He swallowed stupidly as she tipped the jar higher. Half of its contents had already disappeared

“H-hey! D-don’t you think you should take it easy?” He stammered, “You’re gonna give yourself a fit or something!”

She stopped drinking and licked her lips, confusion replacing her smile in a blink.

“What? Why would that happen?”

“Because it’s all sugar!”

“I know! It’s my _favorite_! Isn’t that why you brought it for me?” She bent one eyebrow curiously at him. He blinked once or twice in embarrassment and considered her unfazed reaction.

“O-oh… well actually I… I didn’t know that. It was just lucky I brought honey and could give it to you, to be totally honest about it.” He chuckled nervously “But, you know… most people would get sick if they drank straight honey like that.” He offered in a helpful tone.

“I know.” She chirped. “I was like that too before I became a guardian, you know. I used to be a regular human.” Doug blushed crimson and stuttered a hurried apology.

“S-sorry, Amber, I Just assumed—“

“It’s alright.” She smiled happily, and leaned over to pat his hand in what he supposed was meant to be a conciliatory fashion. “It’s really too bad you can’t drink honey like this, Doug. It really is the best.” His heart jumped into his throat at her touch and he laughed nervously again.

“I-I guess butterflies are just made of tougher stuff than dwarves, eh?” Amber giggled aloud at his words.

“That sounds really silly, but if you can’t even drink a little honey, I guess it must be true!” She trilled and laughed again.

The pair sat and ate the rest of their picnic lunch in affable lighthearted small talk, enjoying the breeze and the warm spring sun of the Yokmir forest clearing.

“This place feels like home to me now, you know?” Amber said after a few moments’ silent appreciation of the rustling leaves and birdsong.

“Do you… not remember your original home?” Doug ventured after a minute or two.

“Yeah, I remember it…” She said casually, “But it doesn’t exist now. That was waaaay long ago, you know. But Yokmir is exactly the same as it’s ever been! It’s so nice to come back her and look around at the same exact stones and the same exact river and the same kinds of trees and plants and monsters everywhere. The forest really is the best home I’ve ever had! It waited all those years for me, just as it ever was…” She smiled a little inward smile, losing a touch of her typical oblivious innocence in favor of a contemplative expression for a beat or two.

Doug watched her face as she stared into some unseen distance for a few moments, then looked up at the sky. This somber side of her was entirely unprecedented as far as his experience went, and he was not at all sure how to respond to it. Finding no words, he looked up. Fluffy white clouds like overfed woollies floated by lazily in the intensely cerulean sky.

“Change isn’t always bad though, you know? You’ll never see the same cloud twice in your whole life but when you look up at the sky, it’s always the same sky after all…”          

“Wow, that sounds really wise, Doug.” She grinned at him. The red-headed dwarf’s pointed ears               turned pink and the corners of his mouth turned up in a self-satisfied way. “But I have no idea what it means.” She continued, laughing aloud in her shrill chortle. Doug nearly snorted in surprise. He opened his mouth to make some kind of retort, but as he watched her rock back and forth, giggling hysterically for another half minute or so, all he could do was smile sentimentally at her.

He lay back on the blanket and looked up at the clouds again. As her shrill laughter finally subsided, he spoke again in wistful tones.

“I wonder what they’re made of… clouds… Those little puffy white ones look so close its like I could reach out and touch them…” He put a hand up and grasped at the air as if to grab a hunk of the cottony mass of cloud shining with sunlight in the vivid sky.

“Oh you want to know?” Amber cried, jumping to her feet suddenly. “I’ll go grab one and bring it to you!” She trilled, leaping into the air and flapping madly as she ascended toward the clear blue heavens.

“W-wait! Amber! I didn’t mean…” He called after her, standing up with a hand outstretched to her. But the little butterfly girl was already shrinking away in the distance above him. The diminutive dwarf squinted at the sky and shaded his eyes with a hand as he searched the huge bowl of blue sky for his tiny companion. His eyes darted from cloud to cloud until he saw one take on a peculiar shape, as though something—or some _one_ —had just flown straight through it and trailed it’s vapor along their heels on their way back out again. He blinked rapidly and then a sound struck his ears.

A shrill scream pierced the quiet spring air as Amber came tumbling out of the sky in the distance above her dwarven companion. Doug’s eyes widened in horror as he watched her little wings humming desperately to keep her aloft. But despite her best efforts she kept repeatedly stalling out and dropping uncontrolled thirty feet at a time between the frantic bursts of flapping.

“AMBER!” Doug shouted, dashing forward to align himself beneath where she was falling from the sky. A few more desperate fits of struggle to break up her fall and she tumbled the last fifteen feet or so, landing directly on top of the dwarf.

He had expected her to fall into his arms, with him standing upright, cradling her little frame in a heroic picture of chivalry… or at least to knock him down more gracefully, sprawled on top of him with his arms around her where so they might enjoy an eyeful of one another’s faces struck with surprise and relief, but no…

The tiny butterfly girl had all but flattened her companion, even her slight weight being too much for him to endure the impact of it and still remain standing. They groaned and scrambled apart from one another in a tangle of limbs and only once they had both struggled to their feet and made certain nothing was broken did he notice that his clothes were wet with chill water. He blinked stupidly at himself, completely at a lost.

“Oh, heheh. Sorry, Doug.” Amber said in a wavering voice. “Seems clouds are actually made of water, somehow.” She was dripping wet and looking up at him with an embarrassed, apologetic smile hanging bravely on her little face.

“Then I guess you kept your promise to bring me one, didn’t you?” He said, grinning. A wild laugh burst from her mouth and she doubled over in a fit of giggles. Doug smiled as wide as ever at her.

No matter what horrors he had come through in the past… if he could see someone like Amber laughing her breath away in pure, careless mirth like this every day from now on… nothing could dampen his spirits… nothing.


End file.
